Ethnicity in the Tenements

Jacob Riis wrote the book How the Other Half Lives to educate his audience of  middle and upper classmen on the desperate situation of the tenants of the lower, poor class. He wanted to instill a sense of change and inspire action to his readers. However, was Riis really advocating for change for all people of all nationality, race, and ethnicity in the city of New York. Due to racism at the time, ethnicity of the tenement residents would effect whether the people of the city felt the area should be reformed.

Beginning with the Chinese, Riis demonstrates present racism towards this group of citizens in New York City, highlighting their lack of aptitude to change and inability to integrate and Americanize. Riis mentions the Chinese' absence of passion when talking about their conversion to Christianity because "he lacks the handle of a strong faith in something, anything" (77). A lack of faith in religion or in anything which the Americans value in society suggests their inability to be transformed and reformed in any means to be helped out financially and thus socially. Also, their differing morals clash with those of the upper class citizens, who find it baffling that "he was angry" at police interference when a Chinese man was beating up his wife (82). The Chinese' failure to Americanize into society and their seeming lack of passion to anything in American values suggests to the audience that reform effort or help need not be offered to these people because they are essentially helpless. They shouldn't be helped because they don't want to be helped. They would rather stay in the bottom than improve their status, in sense giving the upperclassmen the cold shoulder and ignoring any help the government may have to offer. The Chinese racism of how Riis and his audience portrayed this group would influence whether people would want to put in effort to reform the area.

The Jewish community was seen as very odd and dirty, and whether the ability of the people to integrate into upper levels of society were questioned. The dress of the Jews was "queer" and "outlandish" and the robe didn't just demonstrate or exhibit the religion of the people but "betrayed" the race to passersby on the street (85). The chosen adjectives used by Riis to describe the people of the Jewish community clearly show how they weren't favored by society and thus weren't the priority of the city to come to the aid of. Also, Riis mentions that "typhus fever and small-pox are bred" in the housings of the the Jewish people (88). The upper class citizens were terrified that living closer to these kinds of disease centers would increase their affinity to contract the disease. Why would they want to help the people who only caused huge outbreaks of deadly diseases. While it was more likely the close living quarters were the reason for the high numbers of people who would sub come to typhus and cholera, they people still believed it was these foreigners who brought the sicknesses with them. The oddities of the city and the sickly were not priorities in the push towards reform of the tenements. The discrimination of the Jews would effect whether the people of the city felt the area should be reformed or not.

While Jacob Riis' book was revolutionary in bringing the life in the tenements to light to the literate public, it placed the spot light of reform on certain areas of town more so than others instead of incorporating the entire city as one and looking at the lower class as equal. The negative views of the Chinese and Jews specifically shows how the worth of investing help in these groups doesn't appear as if it will be very high.

The question I have about this topic is on whether Riis himself was actually racist towards certain groups and nationalities or was he only writing what his audience would want to hear. Was he putting down other ethnicities because he believed in the discriminatory words he used or was he trying to appeal to the upper class and feed into their beliefs.